Shelley at Twigs of Yore has set herself a task for Australia Day, and a challenge for the rest of us:

Find the earliest piece of documentation you have about an ancestor in Australia. If you don’t have an Australian ancestor, then choose the earliest piece of documentation you have for a relative in Australia.

On Wednesday 26 January 2011 post your answers to these questions:

1. What is the document?
2. Do you remember the research process that lead you to it? How and where did you find it?
3. Tell us the story(ies) of the document. You may like to consider the nature of the document, the people mentioned, the place and the time. Be as long or short, broad or narrow in your story telling as you like!

What document to choose? Which ancestor? The first one in Australia, or the first one born in Australia?

I’ve decided to go with one of my first arrivals into the colony of New South Wales but ignore the very first documents, which are the assisted immigrant passenger lists. These lists are easy to find – you search the online index at the State Records NSW website, and then you look up the microfilm. There are two lists, and if you are lucky your ancestor will appear in both. I posted a story a few years ago about how I found my Richard Eason’s mother’s mother from the ‘relative in the colony’ Richard gave when he immigrated, so I won’t repeat that here.

Instead I’d like to focus on what Richard did when he got here. He eventually became a farmer, and the first document I have for him that he actually signed is his application for a Conditional Purchase.

Conditional Purchases were introduced in 1862 as a way of getting small landholders on the land. They paid an initial deposit of %10 of the value of the land, and had to pay it off. The conditions were that they had to reside on the property, and they had to improve it – build a house, fences, etc. They could select land before it was surveyed, so by the time the surveyor came around there was often some improvements already built, which the surveyor often marked on the plan.

The land is 40 acres in the Parish of Graham, County of Bathurst, which is just north of the town of Blayney.

State Records NSW: NSW Lands Department, Conditional Sales Branch, Correspondence files 1877-1951, NRS8103. Letter no. 71/5977.

I am inclined to think that Richard filled out this form himself, product of the Irish Education system as he was. He said he could read and write when he arrived in the colony in 1850, as did most of the people on the Oriental with him. The handwriting looks similar throughout, except for the signatures of others.

The form was also signed by Robert Ewin. Robert was Richard’s brother-in-law, Richard having married Esther Ewin in 1862. Robert also had land in this area, and Richard bought some of it from him later on.

When the survey was done the land was found to be slightly larger than the 40 acres, and Richard agreed to pay the extra.

Richard built a house on this land and raised his family in it, even though his wife died not long afterwards. His son John raised his own family there. John’s son Richard, my grandfather, sold the land and took the materials for his own building.

The process of finding this document was made easier by the fact that the Conditional Purchase number and Richard’s name was recorded on an old parish map:

NSW Lands Department, Historical Parish Maps. Bathurst County, Graham Parish, 1884. Detail showing Portion 199.

Once I had the Conditional Purchase number, CP71.252, I could go to State Records NSW at Kingswood and ask to see the Conditional Purchase Register for that year. From there I could trace the correspondence through the Correspondence Registers to find the documents. It sounds easy but it is quite time consuming, and easy to make mistakes.

On the map you can see many other names of the people that Richard must have known. Robert and William Ewin were his brothers-in-law. A sister-in-law married a Thornberry. All of them came from the same couple of parishes in County Tyrone in northern Ireland.

A couple of years ago I visited this land and saw the remains of the house. I have written about this previously. I met the current owner of the property, who gave me a photo of Richard’s son John Eason, my great-grandfather, that I had never seen before.

Remains of the house at 'Fernside' near Blayney

I’ve traced many conditional purchases since then, but none have been as exciting as this first one!

Further information:
State Records NSW Archives in Brief No 93 – Background to conditional purchase of Crown land

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Week 3: Cars. What was your first car? Describe the make, model and color, but also any memories you have of the vehicle. You can also expand on this topic and describe the car(s) your parents drove and any childhood memories attached to it.

I’m going to jump straight to family cars. Here is my Mum’s car. She learned to drive after her marriage to my Dad ended and we moved back to Dubbo where her parents were. She bought the car second hand from her father. It was a Valiant, a beige Valiant station wagon. It had a bench seat in the front so we could seat three in the front when necessary. As the eldest of four I sat in the front and the other kids in the back.

The house I grew up in, with the car next to it.

My first driving lessons were in this car. It was a terrible thing, big and heavy. It had a column shift, coming out of the steering column. I ran it into a tree ( I nearly missed it!) at a very low speed and not a scratch did the car suffer.

This is the only photo I can find that has the car in it that doesn’t show people that may not want to be displayed for all to see in my blog. Some of them are in this picture too, but I’m confident that they’re privacy is secure.

I will save the commentary on the house for a future post which I’m sure will be coming over the next few months.

My grandfather had a small farm in his semi-retirement. He used to take my sister and me out there on Sundays, and we used to ride in the back of the ute. We watched farming stuff going on – sheep being dipped and so on. We got our cat from a litter of kittens on the farm. Here we are disembarking after one of these trips:

Pop's ute

I don’t know when riding in the back of a ute became illegal. Perhaps it was already illegal by then. We loved it!

Here is my grandfather and his young family in perhaps the mid-1930s. I like to think this was his first car, but I don’t really know.

Grandfather's car

Actually I’m only guessing that it’s his car. He’s in the middle and looking proprietorial so I think I’m safe. I can imagine the family piling into the car and chugging off home, with all these other people waving them off.

Any information about what sort of car this is would be very welcome!

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I had decided to take advantage of a special deal with 23andMe and get my DNA tested. I am hoping to learn a bit about my deep ancestry from my mitochondrial DNA in this test, as well as some genetic health risks and susceptibilities.

I tried to order the kit a few days before. I eventually realised that my first order with 23andMe didn’t go through, so I ordered again. I received confirmation that it has been sent, which I hadn’t had before, so obviously I had done something wrong, or not done something, before. So far so good!

Timeline so far:

9 Dec 2010 – I ordered a kit from 23andMe

10 Dec 2010 – Kit was shipped from 23andMe

13 Dec 2010 – Kit arrived at my front door

15 Dec 2010 – I spat my sample into the test tube

16 Dec 2010 – Sample collected by courier

21 Dec 2010 – Sample arrived at the 23andMe lab, and I was reminded to register my kit on the website

The process takes 6-8 weeks, so there will be no new updates for a while.

In the meantime, I had ordered some books from Amazon. That order did go through, and all 5 of them have arrived – 3 all at once and the other 2  individually. I’ve read the first 3, the last one being Megan Smolenyak and Ann Turner’s Trace Your Roots with DNA, (2001). Even though the book is nearly 10 years old it gives an excellent introduction to the basics of DNA testing. They discuss the coming developments pretty accurately – more markers, more usefulness for mtDNA, more popularity and so better chances of matching with someone else’s test results.

All this reading has inspired me to more testing! I’ve ordered a test for my maternal uncle, and one for my unsuspecting father or brother.

I’ve also changed companies. I will be using Family Tree DNA for these and probably all subsequent tests. It’s not that I think that they are a better company, or do better tests; it’s more that they do different tests.

Family Tree DNA are more concerned with pure genealogy, whereas 23andMe are more concerned with the health aspects of DNA. It will be interesting to compare the two. Family Tree DNA has, as far as I can tell, the largest number of  projects.

A project is what you join if you want to find matches with other people who may be relatives. The pricing is less expensive if you join a project. Most of the projects are for surnames. My husband, for example, is part of the Bassett project, so he can see how closely he is related to other Bassetts around the world, and where their most recent common ancestor came from. There is little point in getting your DNA tested unless you want to compare it with others’.

Other projects are for geographic areas. My uncle is one of the last of a line of Easons, the first of whom came to Australia from County Tyrone in what is now Northern Ireland, so he will be part of the Ulster Project. The story we were told was that Eason was originally a French Huguenot name with a d’ on the front of it. I have not found any evidence of this as yet, but then my trail runs cold in 1813 with the marriage of Sarah Irwin of Clogher, Tyrone, to Richard Eason of Armagh.

Family Tree DNA do not use couriers unless requested, so this story will unfold a little more slowly.

Image courtesy of Chris Harvey at Dreamstime.

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I nearly dismissed this week’s challenge out of hand. I had heard of Find-a-Grave, and I thought it was an American site, with only American graves.

I was wrong.

I searched the FAQ for ‘international’ to see if it covered countries other than USA, as I couldn’t easily find this information on the homepage, and found that some fixes had been done to clean up the list of countries, including Australia. Woohoo!

So I did a search for my usual test surname – Eason – and restricted the country to Australia. Eason is uncommon enough that I don’t get thousands of results, and not so uncommon that I don’t get any at all.

Much to my surprise the list of results included John Eason, buried in an unmarked grave in Condobolin. I was a bit surprised, as I have a copy of his NSW death registration and a photo of his headstone in Blayney.

Entry for John Eason, buried in Condobolin in 1933, from Find a Grave

Clicking on the link to Condobolin Lawn Cemetery gives this information:

There are approximately 1000 unmarked graves in the general cemetery.

“I visited the undertaker, the council, the ladies club, the local Anglican and Catholic churches, the local court house and the local historical association, asking what records they had. I tried the local newspaper; they have their back issues to about 1906 on film but they weren’t big on obituaries. They don’t have a monumental mason in Condo.”

In compiling the list, reference was made to the NSW indexes of births, deaths and marriages and to military records for further information. The images may be viewed and downloaded from the list of all inscriptions for this cemetery.

I’m impressed that someone has gone to the trouble of deducing that the reported approximately 1000 unmarked burials in Condobolin Lawn Cemetery must include John Eason, whose death was registered in Condobolin. Unfortunately it is dangerous to make these sorts of assumptions. John was in Condobolin with his daughter when he died, and was apparently transferred to Blayney to be buried with his wife Lily, who predeceased him by three years.

Headstone of Lily and John Eason, Blayney Presbyterian Cemetery. Photo taken by the author, Dec 2008.

The website allows corrections to be sent to the contributor, and I have now done so.

Lessons learned:

1. Don’t dismiss a website just because you assume it is American. It may have gone international.
2. Don’t assume that the contents of websites where information has been voluntarily entered is correct.

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I don’t have any military ancestors, unless you include Fijians from the time before Christianity ended tribal warfare. So when the National Archives of Australia put digitised World War I Service records online a couple of years ago I went looking for the siblings of my direct ancestors who were born in the years that would have made them eligible for military service.

I found four, three of whom didn’t return from France.

Ernest Harold Goode (1885-1917), of Millthorpe, NSW, second son of William Goode and Elizabeth Grace Pascoe. Killed in action in France 25th February 1917.

George Harold Goode (1887-1918), of Millthorpe, NSW, third son third of William Goode and Elizabeth Grace Pascoe. Killed in action in France 2nd June 1918.

Douglas James Stewart (1899-1918), of Holbrook, NSW, eldest son of James Simpson Stewart and Annie Lawson. Killed in action in France, 10th August, 1918.

Eric Eason (1894-1976), of Blayney, NSW, eldest son of John Eason and Lily Adelaide Grace Goode. Discharged 4th September 1919 on disembarkation in Sydney. Hid mother Lily Eason, nee Goode, was the eldest sister of Ernest and George Goode.

I have started to examine one of these files in more detail. Douglas James Stewart was my grandmother’s first cousin. He was born and raised in Holbrook, which is near Albury in southern New South Wales. He was just barely 18 when he joined the Australian Expeditionary Force in Sydney on Sunday, 18th February, 1918. My mother says she was told that he looked older than he was, and the women of the town used to give him white feathers, calling him a coward. He joined up as soon as he could:

NAA: Base Records Office Australian Imperial Force; B2455, First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers. 1914-1920; 3013311, Stewart Douglas James : SERN 3718

Both parents had to sign the form as he was under 21 years.

The whole file is 61 pages, and although some pages are certified copies of other pages, most are original records. There is the correspondence the AIF Office received from his father James Simpson Stewart requesting further details about his son’s death, requesting a photograph of the grave, and enquiring about medals. Copies of replies from the Office are there, as is an inventory of the personal effects sent to the next of kin.

It’s very sad. I never knew Douglas James Stewart, nor did my mother, and I’ve never even seen a photograph of him. It’s sad that he has been reduced to pieces of paper in an old file, but it’s brilliant that he can be remembered now that the pieces of paper are available for me to view at home on my computer.

Lest we forget.

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I’ve been in the country for Christmas. My mother lives in Orange and a lot of us converged on her house for a few days. She grew up in Blayney and her father and his parents and grandparents all lived in the area, so it was a good time to do some exploration.

My g-g-grandfather, Richard Eason, bought his first block of land on conditional purchase in 1871. He built his house on this block where his children grew up. He later bought the long thin block across the road and the square one diagonally behind the first one. He called the property “Fernside”.

"Fernside" near Blayney on Greghamstown Road

These first blocks are recognisable on Google Maps to this day, so I thought it would be easy to find them, and it was. My cousin, Peter, was with us and he had been shown where the house was by our uncle, but he’d never been over the fence to have a look. We stood there and wondered whether there were any remains of the original house. We took pictures of the old gate posts and we were looking at the gate into the opposite block when a ute pulled up.

The current owners of the property were on their way home and had left the gate open so they were just coming around the long way to the house to close it. We ran over to let them know why we were lurking on their property, and told them our story about Richard Eason and his son, John, and grandson Richard, who had all owned the place at some point. The current owner (I will call him Frank) knew all these names – his father had bought the place from “Young Dick”. Frank himself had gone to school with my mother’s youngest brother, who had been killed when he was nearly 11 in a farm accident.

Frank gave us a lift in the back of the ute up to where the house used to be. Yes, there were still signs – the outline was still there in rocks, and a couple of cement slabs showed a possible site for the dairy. Then he told us to wait here, and drove off.

Where did he go? Would he come back? I was sure he would but I couldn’t imagine what he had gone to get. We explored the ruins of the house and took pictures.

When he returned he had a photo in his hand of a man dressed in a three-piece suit standing on his verandah with a couple of dogs. He had a watch-chain and was going bald. On the bag was written “Jack Eason on verandah at Fernside”. Jack Eason!!! Pop’s father!

Jack Eason on verandah at Fernside

We have no pictures of Jack Eason and one of his wife Lily that we are not entirely sure is her. No-one living had ever seen either of them. Jack died in 1933 and Lily in 1930, before my mother and most of her siblings were born. It was a miracle. Frank told us what he knew – it had been his mother’s photo, and it was her handwriting on the back. She came into the area after 1933, so Frank didn’t know why she had the photo.

We talked about the property. Frank said there was no dam and had always wondered where they got water from. There was an apple orchard; when Frank’s father got a letter from the council instructing him to either look after the trees or cut them down, he cut most of them down. The gate to the block across the road was originally directly across from the gate into the main block but his family moved it because it got too boggy in the rain.

The materials for the house were taken away by “Young Dick” to build the house in Blayney where his family, including my mother, grew up. The gate posts had been replaced – the original ones were square and these were round. There had been a lot of gum trees on the property but they’d all got “dieback” in the 1970s. I’d like to have seen it then.

A question we couldn’t answer was whether the verandah was on the front or the back of the house. It made no sense to build a verandah facing the hill “and the weather” on the back of the house, but there is no way to be sure.

Frank went to school with my Uncle Ritchie and I would have like to ask him about him, but I didn’t. No-one talks about Ritchie. The whole episode was so traumatic for Mum’s family that they sold up and moved to Dubbo, and changed religions.

Original front gate at "Fernside" with trees near the site of the old house

We stood there for some time, talking about what the place must have been like. I talked about the probate and deceased estate (death duty) files I had seen that indicated that the property had been run down when Jack died. He’d sold everything off and was in Condobolin with his daughter when he died. I was working  up the courage to ask Frank whether he would trust me to take the photo away to have it scanned.

I did ask, and we discussed my mother’s scanner (no good, as it turned out) and whether there would be a photo place open on a Sunday (probably not was Frank’s opinion) so I could drop it back to him the next day on our way back to Sydney. We exchanged addresses and he gave me the photo. I will always be grateful for his kindness and trust in me.

If he hadn’t left the gate open, and if we hadn’t gone over to talk to him, I would never have found this treasure. Sometimes photos appear in the most unlikely places – even in the middle of a paddock!

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